


Harry Styles and The Lovely Legs

by chevythunder



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-04 16:24:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chevythunder/pseuds/chevythunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Styles meets Nick Grimshaw and it doesn't really matter that it's through a television screen. He falls in love anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lovely Legs

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been wanting a fic about young Harold fanboying over Nick during the Freshly/T4/Nighttime era for ages now and finally decided to give it a go myself. It was meant to be a one shot, I promise. 
> 
> This whole thing is based on this gem from the infamous Call or Delete:  
> Harry: I’ve got…ehm…he’s called Neil and he works over the street.  
> Nick: Neil the hairdresser?  
> Harry: Yes.  
> Nick: Oh, he cuts my hair.  
> Harry: Really?  
> Nick: Does he cut your hair?  
> Harry: No, not anymore.
> 
> I'm puppypowerforever on tumblr if you want to come talk/scream/argue with me.   
> Disclaimer: None of the people in the story are intended as real, I don't own neither 1D nor Nick Grimshaw or any other person who may appear in the story. Please don't google yourself.

_Harry Styles is a man of loyalty and principal. His mum says so, Robin usually grunts in the affirmative and the cat has never done anything other than purr when he’s discussed it with her. So when Harry moves to London permanently after the X-factor, it’s simply because of those (admirable and heroic) traits that he picks a hairdresser and then sticks by it. That is the sole reason for his many visits to Neil the Hairdresser, no matter what Niall says. Niall is crazy. He’s also one of Harry’s favorite people in the world but that’s not the point right now. The point is that Neil the Hairdresser is a nice man who deserves all the business he can possibly get. That is all. And if Neil’s shop happens to be located across the street from the BBC Radio 1 building, well. That’s just pure coincidence. Honestly._

 

**********************************************************************************************************************************************************

 

Holmes Chapel is a nice part of England with lovely houses and good schools. Born and raised here, Harry’s had a nice upbringing with a lovely family and good friends. There’s photo albums filled with him and Gemma celebrating birthdays and Christmases, sporting awful haircuts and scraped knees. It’s the stuff that stereotypes of a good childhood are made of.

At fourteen, Harry finds himself chronically bored. The classmates who used to be a source of adventures are now old news and the places where he used to find entertainment now holds none. Nothing in his world has changed in what feels like forever, except for people’s bodies and hormone levels and stuff, a change that in Harry’s case is so far surprisingly absent.

He peaked down the blouse of Linda from down the street once, with her consent of course, and while he deemed her teenage boobs perfectly nice from a kind of anatomical point of view, he didn’t really have any other emotions about them. He and Will talked it over and came to the conclusion that maybe Harry’s more of an ass-man. (Will did at one point ask for an in-depth description of said boobs, but Harry refused. A picture of principal, he is. The cat agrees.) Harry’s still waiting for that tingling feeling everyone’s talking about. Sometimes he thinks there’s something wrong with him, but he puts that thought in a cupboard at the back of his mind and locks the door.

The term ends and it turns out that despite what he’s been hoping for, fourteen-year-old Harry’s summer holidays doesn’t get more exciting than football in the back garden and yarn-playing with the cat. (Usually Gemma finds that game funnier than the cat, but that might just be because of the multiple times Harry falls over whilst trying to make the cat chase after him.) It’s all lazy movie watching and helping his mum out with stuff around the house, waiting for something to happen.

It doesn’t.

\---

Around the time Harry starts school again, Robin buys a new TV for the house and after some whining Harry is allowed to keep the old one in his bedroom, under strict conditions that it won’t affect his grades, the neatness of his room or his dedication to Family Time. When Harry gets home from school after his first day back, there is homework to be done and chores to be carried out. By the time he’s put the cat to bed it’s past midnight and he’s too tired to do anything other than pull his clothes off and fall headfirst into bed.

 

The next morning Harry wakes up early and is about to go back to sleep when he remembers the new shiny object in the room. Well it’s not new and it’s covered in a rather discouraging layer of dust considering it was wiped down twelve hours earlier, but it’s still a telly and it’s located in his room. Harry takes what he can get.

After tiptoeing out in the kitchen for a cuppa and an early morning snack, he sits back on the bed and flicks on the TV. Flipping through the channels makes the bright idea seem rather bleak since it’s mostly early morning shows filled with wine tastings and news from around the world. Not exactly what he’s aiming for whilst alone in bed with a tasty tangerine.

When he’s about to give up, something comes up on the screen. Something pretty, with rather long legs and hair that defies any kind of grooming rules Harry’s learned through stealing Gemma’s glossy magazines.  The camera pans away from this pretty creature to show Alexa Chung in all her model glory. Harry pouts a bit, because while Alexa seems nice enough, her hair is all kinds of trimmed and apparently Harry’s not into that.

A pair of legs shuffles into view and places themselves next to Alexa on the couch. They seem rather fond of each other and banter happily, albeit a bit awkwardly in front of the camera. Harry himself has never had any dreams of being on TV but he thinks he could give Alexa a run for her indie money if he was there to banter with The Legs. Maybe he could say that those jeans are quite fetching and Harry would like to buy a similar pair and then they could walk around London together in matching pants. (Only for laughs, of course, not because Harry wants to steal his entire look or anything.) Or that The Legs’ hair would look kind of good pushed back. Or that Harry’s got a new telly (not really) if he wants to come round. It’s not chat show gold, but Harry thinks that The Legs seems the type to appreciate jeans-talk and hair-related compliments. They could make a feature called Hairy compliments where Harry would talk about people’s grooming techniques and give tips on how to style curls in a fashion-y kind of way. He bets Alexa doesn’t have any tips about that, her hair is all long and elegant.

What should only have been a half hour of lazy telly watching in bed stretches on. Harry can’t seem to stop watching this stupid show. It’s not that the format is fascinating or that they discuss things Harry particularly cares about; it’s this… person that draws him in. More than that, it’s the tingling in his stomach he feels when watching this creature exist in the little box in front of him.

There is nothing apologetic about him. His voice is loud and raspy, his laugh uncontrolled and slightly hysterical. Harry usually apologizes for ten different things before lunch, but he can’t ever imagine this person doing the same. Through all the talking, plugging TV-shows and bantering with an extremely attractive cohost (Harry can admit this even though he’s not personally enticed by it) he never falters. Harry’s not sure whether or not he’d rather fill his room with posters of The Legs’ face as motivation, build a small shrine in his honor or hike his way to London to beg for lessons in How To Be Yourself. All he knows is that this person makes him feel like teenagers are supposed to feel.

He makes Harry feel normal.

When Harry comes out of his TV induced haze, the tea has gone cold and he’s almost late for school. He gets one last glimpse before he has to turn on the telly, right when the two presenters wave goodbye and walk out of frame, a last look that confirms that yes; Harry is indeed an ass-man. 

\---

A couple of hours later it occurs to Harry that despite all his attention being directed towards the TV, he didn’t seem to remember much of what the telly creature and Alexa were talking about. It wouldn’t really be a bother if not for the fact that he didn’t catch a name and now has to spend the entire day thinking of someone he can only call “The Legs”. He tries talking to his friends about it, but as soon as he mentions Alexa Chung, no one wants to hear about the hair or the jeans or the rather long legs. Harry likes his friends, but whether or not Alexa is hotter than Natalie Portman is really not what he wants to discuss right now. He tries to get the conversation back on topic, but no one seems that interested.

\---

7 AM on the dot, Harry is seated at the foot of his bed. The opening titles come on and after briefly wondering why anyone would name a TV-show _Freshly Squeezed_ , his brain quickly empties at the sight of The Legs. He’s wearing a scarf and… oh. Harry’s glad he didn’t take a cup of tea to bed because that would with all certainty be all over his lap right now. It’s just, well. Harry’s always appreciated a good face and this particular one seems even more fetching when sporting thick, black glasses.

Harry immediately imagines taking the glasses of, looking deep into a pair of lovely brown eyes. (Are they brown? Harry thinks so but it’s hard to tell through the dusty screen. Could be green as well, or a misty kind of grey.) In a smooth gesture, Harry puts the glasses on the night stand and moves closer to The Legs at the same time. They’re in Harry’s bedroom of course, The Beatles playing from the stereo and soft afternoon light trickling in through the windows. Maybe The Legs shiver a bit when Harry touches a jeans clad thigh. They start to slowly lean towards one another, so close and…

“LOWER THE DAMN TV.”

Gemma’s voice cuts through any kind of romantic setting Harry’s created for himself and The Legs -who is now back to existing only on the telly chatting to the viewers about… music? He really should be paying more attention, simply admiring someone because of their looks seem a little shallow.

“HARRY!”

Right, the volume. Harry fumbles around with the duvet and finds the remote. It appears that he may have sat on it whilst trying to come up with wooing techniques that are romantic without teetering on creepy. He’s rather sad he didn’t get to finish the fantasy and moodily presses the volume button. At least the sound is lowered and Gemma can go back to sleep. Harry loves his sister but there are only so many times you can eat breakfast with a human thunderstorm. She’s not really a morning person.

Back at the telly, The Lovely Legs is conversing with Alexa about a festival they both want to go to. Harry notes how The Lovely Legs’ mouth moves, the broad smile, the quick laughter. He tries to actually pay some attention to what’s being said but the only name he’s able to catch seemingly directed towards The Lovely Legs has been “Grim”. He doesn’t know if it’s a nickname, an inside joke or just his hearing malfunctioning so he’s not yet willing to start calling him _Grim_ , even if it would just be inside his own head.

There’s some talk about a new band, Alexa making a joke that makes Harry laugh a little too loud and he has to mute the TV for a couple of seconds to hear if he accidentally woke up Gemma again. It seems like the coast is clear, so he turns the sound back on. And then it happens.

“So, Nick, why don’t you tell the viewers more about how they can get tickets?”

 _Nick_. That’s a good name. Nick. Nicholas. Who’s that? Oh, that’s Nick. His mum would approve of that name, Harry thinks. NickandHarry. HarryandNick. 

\---

The week flies by and every morning Harry’s ready with a cup of tea and sleep ruffled hair. Nick wears indie t-shirts, ill-fitting jeans and sometimes, though not nearly often enough, glasses. Harry is pretty sure that if he could, he would steal every single thing Nick has ever worn.

The school days seem longer than before and instead of thinking about college he starts to spend more and more time rehearsing with his band. This has nothing to do with Nick, absolutely not, so if Harry starts imagining what it would be like to go on _Freshly_ as the new music sensation, that is purely a coincidence.

They get a gig at a wedding and Harry sings his heart out in every single chorus. Will looks at him a little weirdly, but that’s probably because he hasn’t realized how big White Eskimo could be. They haven’t played together that long but they all agree that it’s cool to be in a band and they could use some extra money. Harry tries designing a logo for them but it only leads to him trying to draw little sketches of Nick. They never turn out the way he wants them to but he doesn’t want to throw them away in case his mum – or worse, Gemma – spots them in the trash. He hides them in a box of old school assignments under his bed and feels like he carries the world’s best secret.

\---

Something Harry notices while watching the show is that amongst the talk about bands and Hollyoaks, Alexa likes to poke fun at Nick by saying things like “You should know what it’s like to drag yourself home at eight am” or “You’re clothes look familiar, did you change before you got here?” or, if they’re talking about the new and hip on the music scene “Surely you’ve met them, Grim. Man about town, you are.” Nick takes it in jest and even though it doesn’t happen every day, surely there must be a reason behind the teasing.

Harry is once again hindered in his stealthy spying by the shared family computer (not that he’s ever done spy work before, but if he did, he reckons this would be a normal – and annoying – occurrence) that never seems to be available when he needs it. Robin’s working on something that’s got a deadline soon and therefore cannot surrender the computer to Harry’s “free time activities”. 

Slightly bitter, Harry sulks in his bedroom. It doesn’t last long though, because then it hits him that surely, someone who’s on the telly getting teased about late nights would appear in the papers. Easy, all he has to do is sneak into a shop and search through the news stand for articles about Nick. Maybe Harry does have a future as a spy.

\---

There’s a Tesco on the outskirts of Holmes Chapel that’s big enough to carry all the papers Nick could possibly be in, but it’s also where Harry’s cousin works part-time after school so he can never feel completely safe from probing eyes.

His spying routine is simple; he goes directly from school to Tesco, quickly walk through the shop and then systematically go through the magazines that could possibly include Nick. The tabloids have proven the most helpful, but they are placed in front of the check-outs and he feels awkward trying to browse them with the cashiers watching. It’s also impolite to not pay for them and after two weeks of paying for something unnecessary (no one really needs eight rolls of Scotch tape and five lemons over the stretch of fourteen days) Harry decides that his routine may not be as awesome as he thought and tries to kick the habit.

When that doesn’t work, other methods must be tested.

 

“Absolutely not, they only write rubbish.”

So far, Harry’s not had much success in convincing his mum that it’s essential that she starts buying the Daily Mail.

“But mum, it’s for a project. We’re studying media and how the tabloids talk about people and stuff.”

“What people?”

“No one special, at all, just. People. From the world. Living.”

Harry emphasizes his words with elaborate hand gestures. His mum looks at him suspiciously for a few moments.

“Fine. But only because it’s for school.”

Harry’s insides are doing a victory dance inspired by _Don’t stop believing_. Harry’s outer self gives his mum a casual hug and hopes she won’t notice that this particular project will never ever finish.

From then on Harry can stalk Nick From The Telly without any suspicious cashier’s looking his way. Nick is not in the papers every day, but at least once a week there is an article mentioning him together with one of the women that seems to surround him at any given minute. There’s the Geldof’s and Kelly Osbourne, Agyness Deyn and Alexa of course, all laughing and following Nick to different taxi’s or into nightclubs. Harry can sympathize. He’d probably follow Nick pretty much anywhere.

\---

Christmas comes and goes, the winter starts to fade and suddenly it’s February and Harry turns fifteen. He’s been feeling a bit older and a lot less bored. Maybe this teenage business gets easier if you just stick it out for a bit.

\---

He’s rehearsing with the band in Tom’s basement when he thinks of a way to spice things up. During the chorus of _Come together_ , he starts moving from side to side, kicking out his legs a bit and shimmies slightly. There’s no mirror around, but he feels wicked and that’s enough for Harry. No one who’s buzzing inside looks silly, no matter how they dance.

When the song is over, Harry grins to himself and looks back towards Adam sitting behind the drums. He’s met with furrowed brows and a puzzled expression, something that’s mirrored in both Tom and Will’s faces.

“What?” Harry swings the microphone around.

“What was that?” Will sounds confused and almost… angry?

“I was just trying something.” Harry shrugs his shoulders.

“Okay, whatever. Just… don’t grind around like that, looks stupid.”

And alright, Harry can take some criticism. They play _Summer of ’69_ next and Harry mellows down his performance a bit. The leg-kicking stays though. Some things are too good to just throw away.

\---

“How’s it going in here, you alright darling?” If the warm grandma voice wasn’t enough, the bum pinch definitely seals the intruder’s identity.

It’s almost closing time at the bakery and even though he’s pretty sure he can do it by himself, Barbara usually pops round to help out. She’s one of Harry’s favorite people in the whole world and she’s been a bit lonely ever since her husband passed away last year.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

Barbara hums while she starts sweeping the floor behind the counter. It’s both easier and faster to just vacuum it, but Barbara likes her routines and this particular one dates back to before Harry was born.

“Are you sure? You’ve been a bit distracted lately. Don’t think I haven’t noticed!”

“I’m really alright.”

“Oh, fine, keep it to yourself. Secrets are meant to be shared you know.” She tries to sound irritated but her smile betrays her.

Harry abandons the half packed bread to give her a hug. She squeezes him a little too tight. Harry thinks that maybe this is the first hug she’s had today and that thought makes him hold on to her small frame for longer than usual.

“Thank you for asking, though.” His words sounds muffled against her shoulder. She pats him on the back and he lets her go.

“You’re a nice boy.” Barbara tries to sneakily swipe her eyes and Harry lets her get away with it. “If you don’t want to tell, I’m not going to make you. I’m sure whoever it is that’s caught your eye will come round here and then I’ll meet them properly.”

“You’re a very nosy old lady.”

Barbara laughs and swats at him. They close up and Harry decides to walk her home, despite her protests.

 

On the way home from Barbara’s, he can’t get her comment out of his head. Is he really acting like he does when he properly fancies someone? It’s not like that, he just likes Nick, he doesn’t _like_ like him. It’s not real, thinking about someone on the telly. Everyone does it, just because Harry thinks Nick’s funny and nice and kind and wears lovely clothes that sometimes make his body shape completely disappear behind stripes or moody quotes or not-tight-enough jeans does not mean he wants to kiss him.

Alright, maybe in his head when they’re childhood mates and Harry comes to London and visits for the weekend or if they binned off Alexa and Harry took her place. They could cuddle during ad-breaks and kiss a little in the make-up room. It’s not real because it’ll never happen. The I-would-very-much-like-to-put-my-mouth-on-that-persons-mouth feeling he gets whilst watching the telly doesn’t really mean anything. He wouldn’t actually kiss Nick in real life.

Harry walks on in a completely normal way, exuding casualty in a not at all forced manner. He definitely doesn’t think about kissing a particular pair of lips or mouths that form words with a Manchester accent (is it Manchester? Harry’s not sure - maybe he should ask, no, wait, he can’t because _it’s not real_ ) or legs that go on for days.

When he’s halfway home he gives up pretending. Apparently thinking that he doesn’t actually want to kiss him makes Harry’s brain quite eager to make the leap and obsessively think about actually kissingNick From The Telly. Harry blames it on evolution. Somewhere down the line, thousands of years ago, some stupid DNA-string that makes teenagers from small English villages think about putting their lips against lips attached to people they’ll never meet simply refused to be left on the cutting room floor and jumped back into the genes of Harry’s forefathers.

By the time Harry comes through the front door and is met with the smell of his mum’s cooking, the only thing on his mind is Nick’s slightly chapped lips. He’s still pretty certain that he won’t ever get to kiss Nick in real life, but the thought of it still won’t go away. Would it be different than the kissing he’s done up until now? Annie’s lips were kind of chapped when he kissed her in the third grade and that was okay. Linda with the boobs had very soft lips but there were no fireworks or a hallelujah choir in the background like there’s supposed to be (he might have done some research on the subject after that time, he also may have borrowed all of his mum’s romance books). A petulant meow gets him out of his head long enough to pick up the cat and cuddle her close.

\---

The next morning during a fashion segment Harry suddenly freezes. He’s been doing the same thing he does every morning, drinking tea and thinking about Nick sitting alongside him on the bed. And then what they could do on the bed. He can’t point out what it is in the flurry of skirt, jacket and trouser-talk that pokes his brain, but something turned his insides upside down and suddenly Harry’s mind is looping one single thought.

Nick is a boy.

A boy Harry’s been thinking about kissing. Harry would potentially like to marry this boy in ten different lifetimes and have a puppy and a kitten who overcome society’s pressure to be enemies and grow up as best friends. He’d like to take trips around the world, just the two of them, and discover continents and monuments. He wants them to make a point of visiting all the art museums in the world just so that they can look at each other and say “You’re still the best thing I’ve ever seen.” For all the planning he’s done, the imagines, the well-thought out scenarios where they’d meet and fall into each other’s arms, this little (massive, enormous) detail never came up.

Harry wants to kiss a boy.

He scrambles for something, anything that could explain this monstrosity of stupidity but comes up blank. The truth has to be that, as dumb as it may sound, Harry’s never thought of Nick as a guy. In Harry’s mind he’s always just been a person, or a creature or an unknowing instigator of day-time fantasies. Of course Harry _knows_ Nick is a male human being, it’s not like he’s hasn’t studied the crotch area of every pair of pants Nick owns – quite avidly at that, but somehow his brain chose to forget that part of Nick’s body whilst thinking about his mouth and hands and legs in connection with Harry’s mouth and hands and legs.

Oh God.

He carefully places the teacup on the floor and ignores the way his hand is shaking. He lies down and stares up at the ceiling. Harry used to do this when he was younger, used to see himself up there like on a movie screen, fighting villains and joking around with friends dressed in super hero clothes. All his best friends were there, and the cat was their official mascot. He distinctly remembers casting Will as the Robin to Harry’s Batman but he never ever told him out of fear that Will would make him be Robin instead.

Today, all the ceiling gives him is uncomfortable questions.

What if it’s not just Nick? What if it’s all boys? Is this why he hasn’t been bothered about kissing girls or looking at body parts he himself does not possess? Does he want to kiss Will? Tom? Adam? He thinks Alexa is beautiful, does he want to kiss her? And _why_ has he never thought about this before?

What does he do now?

\---

He can’t concentrate in school, is too busy either freaking out or looking at the people around him, the same faces that’s been in his class since first grade. He knows everyone here even if he doesn’t like some of them and only considers a few his actual friends.

Will notices him looking and makes a face at him. Harry sticks out his tongue and gets told off by the teacher. It’s worth it though, because at least he got the answer to one of his ceiling-induced questions. He does not want to kiss Will.

\---

From time to time Harry will get himself tangled in a problem he’s unable to fix. This makes him spend a little too much time in his own head without getting any closer to a solution and usually Gemma only lets him get away with it for a day or two before she intervenes.

It’s been four days and eleven hours since Harry connected the Nick-kissing thoughts with boy-kissing thoughts. Not that he’s been waiting for her to butt in or anything, he’s perfectly fine by himself, as long as he follows his usual routine. Watch Nick in the morning, wonder if he and Alexa are secretly dating, wonder if she minds the chapped lips or the fact that Nick’s bottom lip is bigger than his top one. (Wonder if he wants to kiss boys because Nick is a boy or if he wants to kiss Nick despite him being a boy.) Go to school with an open and eager mind, not sit in Math’s class thinking about what Nick would look like in really, really skinny jeans and absolutely not ignore the Bio-teacher so that he can spend an hour pondering the likeness of those glasses being without prescription.

It seems that even in the face of big existential questions regarding himself and his possible penis-fancy, he’s still very much interested in Nick’s aesthetics. Exactly how sad that is, Harry does not know.

When he gets home, it’s time to feed the cat and watch the telly with the family – regular telly, without presenters who inspire possible life-style changes – sneak the Daily Mail with him up to his bedroom and peruse it before sleep. This pattern repeats itself for days on end and really, Harry’s fine and doesn’t need to talk to Gemma at all.

\---

“I need to talk to you.” Gemma doesn’t look up from the (his) copy of today’s Mail.

“Gem.” Is that a smirk? Nothing about this is smirk-worthy.

“What is it, baby bro?”

Gemma lowers the paper enough so that he can see the top of her nose. She lifts one eyebrow, a feat she knows Harry can’t manage and therefore uses whenever she wants to feel superior. Harry’s not affected, he’s perfectly fine with all the functions of his face and don’t need any others, thank you very much. Harry can’t stop himself from frowning a bit.

“You look like an eight-year old.”

Harry frowns harder.

“Fine, six-year old.”

Harry looks down on his socks and tries not to snap at her. He’s surrendered to the fact that he really does need her help. When Harry peaks back up Gemma’s face has taken on that searching look that usually leads to an interrogation.

“Sit down.”

So it begins. Harry sits down on the couch but can’t get comfortable. He doesn’t know if it’s his newfound desire to kiss a guy from the telly or from the fall he took yesterday on the way home from the bakery but the sofa cushions are lumpy no matter how he tries to sink into them.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re fidgeting worse than you did when you gave mum food poisoning.”

“I did not give her food poisoning! I just made dinner and she happened to get sick a couple of hours later.”

Gemma’s doing the eyebrow thing again. Suddenly Harry’s face feels a little inadequate. Gemma waves an arm at him.

“Come here.”

Harry scoots over and lets himself be tucked into her side. She’s always been a great cuddler, but right now not even that can make the couch feel comfortable. Maybe the old sofa broke and got replaced without anyone telling him. He was quite attached to the old couch, so it does make sense that he should be spared the grieving.

“Get it out. Whatever it is, I won’t judge you.”

Harry looks up at her. She shrugs a bit.

“Well, I won’t judge you more than usual.”

The thing is that Harry has no idea what to say. He knows that the possibility of Gemma being disgusted by him is very slim, but it’s still there. He doesn’t even know if he likes boys, or if he just likes Nick. Barbara says that Harry thinks too much about other people, and that’s not even counting the time he’s spent thinking about Nick. Harry tugs on his hair a bit, making it stand out more than usual. He can’t stop his knee from bouncing. His mouth is dry. His hand won’t leave his fringe alone.

Gemma untangles his hand from the curls and weaves their fingers together.

“Harry.”

That’s her gentle voice, the one she’s been using since he was three and hid under his bed when he’d accidentally broken her favorite mug. He snuggles a bit closer and opens his mouth but there’s a lump in his throat that won’t let him speak. Gemma squeezes his hand. Harry keeps his eyes locked on their fingers. It seems stupid now, how he spent hours debating whether or not to tell her but never gave any thought as to what he would actually say. Right now there’s only one thing he can come up with.

“I want to kiss Nick.”

Their hands look a little blurry and Harry blinks rapidly. It’s very quiet, Robin’s not home yet and Anne’s at the only Indian place in town getting dinner.

“Who’s Nick?”

He could still make something up. He could say that Nick is a girl who has a really scary boyfriend or that she’s the new lunch-lady at school or a girl he’s met over the Internet (though that might not work because of the shared family computer and how there’s no way he could’ve had an online romance without anyone noticing). Nick could be short for Nicole or Nicolette.

It will be okay if he lies. She’ll never know and no one will find out. It will probably go away eventually and he can go back to talking about girls with his friends without feeling fake or awkward.

“Nick’s…um.”

The words are on the tip of his tongue but he can’t do it. No matter how much he wants to, it’s too late to back out now.

“Nick’s a boy.”

The house is too quiet and the lump is back in his throat. Harry’s heartbeats are so loud they must surely echo around the room and even though they are sat closely together he feels football pitches of distance in the air between him and Gem.

Gemma untangles their hands and Harry’s breath hitches. He can’t look up, he won’t, he’ll sit here while Gemma leaves and then he can cry for a bit before he has to convince her not to tell anyone even if she’ll hate him for the rest or her life. He focuses on blinking away the tears and not to think about anything else. It’ll be okay. As long as he won’t have to see her disappointed and angry face, it’ll be fine.

Harry’s forced to turn his head up when a hand grips his chin. He closes his eyes and keeps them that way, his breath is sporadic and loud, he can’t stop a couple of tears from escaping and why is this damn couch so uncomfortable?

“I don’t care.”

Harry’s eyes flies open. Gemma’s looking straight at him but he’s too wound up to try and read her expression. He wrenches away from her and stands up.

“You don’t care? This is… this is not normal. I am fifteen years old and I don’t want to kiss anyone from school or the bakery or the Internet and I don’t care about looking at Linda’s boobs. The only one I fancy is this boy from the telly and I can’t- I can’t _stop it_. If you hate me it’s better that you just _say so_ instead of just ignoring that there’s something wrong with me.”

He’s proper crying now, angrily wipes his face and breathes through his mouth.

“I just- I’m _sorry_ , alright? I didn’t mean to.”

Gemma is frozen on the couch. A sob Harry can’t control seems to shake her out of it and she grabs his hand and pulls hard. Harry falls into her lap and she holds on tight.

“Listen to me.”

Harry’s given up all self-control now, sobbing hard into his sister’s shoulder.

“There is nothing wrong with you. Don’t you _ever_ say that again. I didn’t mean that I don’t care about you, I meant that I don’t care if you want to look at Linda’s boobs or if you want to kiss every single person in the whole damn school or if you’d like to propose to Barbara. You are my brother and you’ll always be my brother.”

Harry’s head is heavy and he can’t make sense of anything. His hand has found the sleeve of her shirt and he makes it an anchor, focusing whatever thoughts he can gather to just hang on to that bit of bright green cotton.

“We’ll just sit here. You and me, we’ll sit here for a while.”

There’s something fierce in her tone that cuts off any objections Harry might have. She doesn’t stroke his hair or rearrange his legs even though his knees surely must feel uncomfortable pressed into her thigh. She just holds on.

 

Harry’s not sure when Anne gets home, but when he feels her hug alongside Gemma’s the tears starts again.

“Mum.”

“Yes darling.”

“I like a boy.”

A pair of lips presses into his hair.

“Okay.”

Maybe it is okay.

\---

White Eskimo scores a gig at the 50th anniversary of… something to do with a big company that’s got a lot of employees but not enough money to hire a professional band. Harry thinks they do things with computers, but he’s not sure.

They’ve gotten better at organizing the instruments they borrow from school and mostly knows which stuff plugs in where. After packing everything into the van Adam’s brother is driving them in they set off to the venue.

The speakers are not very good and the audience consists of people too self-involved or drunk to care about the cover band on stage. They’ve played about half of their set list when Harry decides it’s not working. If no one is watching, maybe that’s because they’re not doing anything worthy of their attention. _I saw her standing there_ is next and Harry just lets go. It feels even better now than it did in Tom’s basement because now they are people watching. He gets all the attention he was after and then some. People eventually start dancing, sloppily but enthusiastically whilst shouting along to the lyrics Harry bellows out. It may not be Harry’s idea of a perfect crowd, but it still makes him feel brightly lit up and so, so alive. The song ends and Harry’s absolutely certain that this is the feeling he wants to chase for the rest of his life.

\---

After the show when they’re standing around waiting to get paid, Harry notices that no one’s talking. He tries to get eye contact with Will but he’s looking steadily on the floor, clenching his jaw. Maybe it’s the prospect of the long ride home with all the equipment that’s bothering him. Harry reaches out to touch his arm but Will draws away. In the corner of his eye, Harry can see Tom give Will a look, but Will just shakes his head.

It takes about an hour before everything’s been packed into the car and the only thing Harry knows is that something is wrong. When he tried to help Adam with the drums he just sneered at him and Will wouldn’t let him touch the guitar.  Tom and Adam go inside one last time to check if they’ve forgotten anything. Adam’s brother is already sitting in the van, but neither Will nor Harry knows him well enough to strike up a conversation so they stay outside.

Will leans back onto the side of the car and crosses his arms. He turns his head away when Harry leans next to him. Harry frowns and moves to stand right in front of him.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?”

Will clenches his jaw but doesn’t answer.

“If something’s wrong you can tell me. I’ll try to listen and stuff.”

Will snorts.

“Right.”

Harry’s starting to get a little annoyed.

“I don’t get why you’re so angry, I-”

“No, you don’t.” Will gestures behind Harry to the venue. People are starting to drop off, milling towards their cars or having the final cigarette of the night.

“That right there, that’s it. That’s what we’re doing. I don’t know what’s going on in your head lately, but this is your life. Alright? A cheap venue with a crappy sound, embarrassing birds over forty who get too pissed and too loud. That’s what we’re dealing with and you’re in there prancing around like a _fucking_ diva. This ain’t Wembley and you sure as hell ain’t Mick fucking Jagger. It’s embarrassing to me and to Tom and to Adam.”

Harry tries to look away but Will keeps his gaze locked on him and Harry can’t move.

“Maybe you don’t need this because you have the nice house with the rich step dad and the little bakery you always strut around in, but the rest of us? We need this gig. I’m not going to uni and my grades are shit so I’ll probably not get a job. I don’t care if we’re bad. I don’t care if these are the only kinds of gigs that we’re ever gonna get because the pay’s alright and I know how to do it.”

Harry’s never thought about it, but now that it’s been pointed out to him he suddenly remembers other things. Fourth grade when he brought money in a blue Spider-Man wallet to every single lunch break because he wanted to buy the biscuit packets that came with stickers in, last year when he took a shine to Abercrombie - so much so that Gemma’s complained about having nightmares with hoodies trying to strangle her in her sleep – and refused to buy any other brand of clothing, holidays with the family over half-term to Spain or Paris. The only thing he’s ever seen Will eat for lunch is sandwiches with peanut butter and jelly and when Harry’s talked about skiing trips, Will’s talked about sneaking into the movies or playing video games at a mate’s. He studies the ground, traces patterns in the dirt with his foot. There’s a heavy feeling in Harry’s chest, spreading quickly. He just wanted people to look at him.

“The other ones ain’t gonna say it because they’ve not got the guts to, but if you don’t drop it, you’re out. We can’t fail this thing just because people think we have a fag for a singer.”

Harry’s eyes shoot up and meet Wills. Will looks at him, startled at first and then understanding seems to dawn on him. Something hard sets in his jaw, makes his eyes colder than before.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Whatever answer Harry scrambles his brain for is cut off by the return of Adam and Tom.

“Alright lads?” Tom looks a bit apprehensive, eyes flickering between Will and Harry.

Will wrenches the door to the van’s driver seat open.

“Fine.” He slams the door shut and starts the car. Tom turns to focus on Harry.

“Yeah, we’re fine.” His voice may have been thicker than usual, but when Harry himself ignores it Tom does the same.

The car ride home is a quiet one.

\---

Harry manages to sneak into the house unseen. He gets through his bathroom routine, pulls out the oldest pair of sweatpants he owns and even manages to pick up the cat and take her to bed with him before he breaks down.

That was it.

That is the reaction that will repeat itself over and over again. Every time someone looks at him and understands, that will be their response. _“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”_

Because of this… this _thing,_ Harry is no longer Harry. He’s turned into A Problem. It’s a bother for other people that Harry is a boy who likes boys. Will doesn’t like it, Tom probably doesn’t either. Gemma said she didn’t care, but she also didn’t say that she loved him. Maybe she can’t anymore, not now when she knows. The cat wiggles a bit under his arm and he realizes that he’s been squeezing her too tight. He lets go a bit, strokes her tail in apology.

Everyone in the family loves her now, but when they got her it was only because Harry’d been nagging his mum for five months. He’d seen a TV-show about cats who got abandoned at the end of summer holidays when the families who’d bought them at the beginning of their vacation went back home to the city. _Summer cats_ , the show was called, with a theme song that reminded Harry of the kind of sadness you feel when you see a dead animal at the side of the road. Five minutes after the show was over, Harry devised a plan to save as many cats as possible. He showed it to Gemma who called him stupid and then to his mum who explained that while it was a very nice thought, the program was made in the US and none of the cats were ones Harry could save.

The cat currently purring on his pillow came as a surprise on his twelfth birthday and now, she’s just as important to the family as any of the human members.  Harry buries his face in her soft fur and thinks of all the cats he never saved, the plans to make other’s happy with newly adopted felines he made but gave up on as soon as he got happy himself.

 

When he turns on his back, the ceiling is empty on all questions but one. _What if Will tells someone?_


	2. Being A Problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is kind of late, sorry. I swear, soon actual!Nick will turn up in this story, bear with me a little while longer.

Harry wakes up too hot, his skin sticky after sleeping with clothes on. Usually he strips down completely, but yesterday he wanted something to protect him from himself, if only for a little while. Harry who likes boys and is A Problem sleeps without his clothes. He’s not sure that’s who he wants to be anymore.

He decides to think about this reasonably. Logic has never been his strong point but this is important enough to try. A page from his math notebook gets ripped out and divided into two columns: What Harry does and What Other Guys Do.

In the Harry column he writes in things like “play with the cat a lot”, “cuddle”, “watch Nick and Alexa on the telly”, and finally, in a slightly wavering writing “thinks about boys”. The Other Guys side fills up with notes about sports and telly, drinking cheap beer at someone’s house on a Friday night. Thinking about girls.

When he looks down at the now scribble-filled paper, he realizes that it didn’t help at all. This turned out to be a self-developed cheat sheet on all the ways Harry is different, embarrassing. Wrong. It makes him feel something heavy in his stomach, something itching to take over and never let go.

He doesn’t throw the paper away.

He stops watching the show in the mornings.

He stands in his room with his headphones in, miming along to his favorite songs and trains himself in how to stand still, how to put all the joy he used to get from moving into a simple tap of the foot.

He slowly starts to erase the parts of him that don’t fit into the Other Guy’s column.

He’s trying to be okay with it.

***

After about a week of pointedly sleeping in until he’s forced by his mum to leave the bed and ignoring the Daily Mail put on his desk every afternoon, he makes a joke about one of the substitute teachers’ body in class. It’s not a very good joke but it is crude enough to make most of the guys laugh.

When he makes it to lunch after being sent to the staff room and being lectured by the head master about respecting the teachers and women in general, Will throws an arm around his shoulders.

“Did ya hear the joke H made before?”

“No, what?”

David, a guy with soft eyes and a smile that’s a bit too wide, leans eagerly across the table. Harry hesitates.

“Go on, tell him!” Will nudges Harry. Harry looks up at him and sees something akin to approval in Will’s eyes.

Harry tells the joke and the group around the table laughs. The heavy feeling in Harry’s stomach has spread, is gnawing on his hipbones, trying to overtake him, make him invisible. He feels strangely resigned to it, his body too heavy to fight back.

***

His family knows something’s changed but he makes sure to act out in a classic teenage-y kind of way. Underneath the complaints about his mum only making his room disorganized and ruining shirts whilst washing them, there’s an anger Harry’s desperately trying to control. He pisses of Gemma when he pokes fun at one of her friends for wearing a low-cut top and spends the rest of the night up in his room, guilt crawling under his skin.

He does apologize to Gemma’s friend later. She ruffles his hair a bit and claims that she’s been waiting for it, he is a teenage boy after all, obsessed with boobs the lot of them. It’s supposed to make him feel better, but it really doesn’t.

There is something missing now, he knows it but can’t bring himself to go back to the TV in the mornings. It feels like giving up on this whole fitting in thing and since he’s never had a problem with it before this Nick-thing started, it’s not hard to figure out the faulting factor. Harry wouldn’t say he needs approval from everyone, he’s had enough problems with classmates and distant relatives to know that he’s fine being on a polite level of acquaintance with people he knows doesn’t like him, but he needs attention.

Telling more people about the liking boys thing would drive people away, he’s sure of it. He doesn’t doubt that Will would make good of his word and throw him out of the band, and then out of the friend group. Harry can’t be alone. He just can’t.

Slowly, he rebuilds an image for himself. He’s a bit cheekier, a little more restrained whilst discussing personal things. A bit blander, not so easy to pick out from a crowd. Talks more about wanting to do things outside of Holmes Chapel, but the dreams are carefully constructed to both be appealing enough to his mates that they too go off on it and, at the same time, utterly unreachable. He wants to get out of this town but he doesn’t want to take anyone with him when he does.

On stage he keeps his movements restrained, focuses on singing as flawlessly as he can. White Eskimo is entering a competition in a couple of days and he can’t afford to let anyone down.

****

A bunch of them are sitting in Tom’s living room, not really doing anything but not bored enough to go home. Adam pokes around Tom’s CD collection, pulls some of them out and comments on the art work. Harry’s listening with as much interest he can muster, which at this point is not much.

He never realized before that everything they talk about go in circles. It starts off with something that’s wrong in school, moves on to how much the teacher’s suck which then transcends into talking about people they don’t like, girls they don’t like, girls in magazine they fancy, comparisons to the girls in school and then they’re back to the problem they’d started out talking about in the first place.

“Yeah, Grimmy was playing it.”

Harry freezes. He slowly turns his head to where Adam’s standing, holding up a record Harry doesn’t recognize.

“Is that the bloke on weekends?”

Will. Will knows of someone called Grimmy who’s doing something on weekends. This is not Harry’s Nick, no way. He works Monday to Friday on the telly, not Saturdays and Sundays. Those are the days Nick usually goes out with his friends. Not that Harry would know, not any more, he’s not paid any attention to the papers in weeks now.

“I heard he’s getting night time.”

“Sick. He’s a right laugh.”

“D’ya ever see him on the telly? I’d pay good fucking money to have Chung all over me like that. Proper desperate for it, she is.”

If Harry just sits here and doesn’t move, no one will notice his chest aching, violently trying to make him crumble. He feels stupid, thinking he had any claim on Nick, any ownership of the persona he’d gotten attached to. He so desperately wanted something for himself, so focused on that feeling of normality he felt while watching that he didn’t stop to think about the rest of the audience. The other people, with cooler clothes and better banter who are also watching, without this obsession Harry’s developed.

Adam and Tom are still talking and a part of Harry wants to scream at them, punch and kick at everything he can reach until there’s nothing left of this awful feeling inside him. Tom is still bragging about this new record and he doesn’t get it. He just thinks it’s a joke, a silly TV show that he can watch before school and then forget about. It’s more important than that, Nick is more important than that but Harry can’t give in to it because as much as he hates being surrounded by people who doesn’t understand, he knows that what he hates even more is being surrounded by no one at all.

***

When he gets home Harry can’t stop himself from gathering up all the copies of last week’s Mail, taking them up to his room. Slowly, he goes through them one after one. In Wednesday’s, there’s a photo of Nick with Pixie Geldof. In Friday’s there’s his name mentioned in an article about a new club opening up in Camden.

In Saturday’s there’s a short article about _Nick Grimshaw, presenter on Freshly Squeezed, taking over John Peels old nighttime slot on BBC Radio 1. He’s starting on the 11th of June._

Well then.

Harry takes the stupid sketches from the box under his bed and throws them in a random garbage can on the way to school. Nick is no longer a secret of Harry's to keep.

***

It’s early afternoon when it’s finally White Eskimos turn to take the stage. The other bands have been good and Harry’s never felt so uncertain of his own voice. His mind keep running over the worst scenarios possible – he could drop the microphone and make a fool of himself, he could forget the lyrics and make a fool of himself, he could lose his voice and really make a fool of himself.

At that moment, nothing can make him feel better so he just sits in a corner of the empty classroom that is crowned green room for the day and tries to make himself melt into the wall.

Their names are called. Adam looks a little pale and Will has put on his nonchalant face which Harry knows to mean he’s absolutely terrified. That makes Harry feel a little better. Deep down Will is still the same guy who got nervous giving presentations in front of the class and made Harry promise each time to look straight at him so that Will could focus on him.He’s never been great with a crowd, Will prefers to have three, maybe four, people enraptured with his stories. Any more than that and he immediately retracts into a persona that’s a bit too loud, a little too confident.

As if he could sense Harry thinking about him, Will looks up and gives Harry a curt nod. This is it.

They play two songs and Harry is swaying to the music, leaning into the microphone and sweating through his shirt. His foot is tapping and he’s willing himself to feel something, get euphoric, get lost without losing himself in the music. He doesn’t.

They win the competition.

They celebrate with greasy food and cheap beer Adam’s brother bought for them. Tom’s girlfriend tags along, sits in his lap and eats more food than the rest of them.

Tom looks at her like she’s the single greatest thing to ever walk the earth. Harry is suddenly blindingly jealous. Will catches him looking and nudges Harry with his shoulder.

“You should get one of them.” He raises his eyebrows. Harry nods.

“Sure.”

“Did I tell you about the bird from Manchester? She’s probably got a friend or summat.”

Harry settles on smiling a bit. Will seems to take that as approval, and pats Harry’s back. He looks kind of proud. There’s a little part of Harry that hates him.

***

The decision not to listen to the radio show is not one Harry makes consciously. It’s just that whilst looking through the papers, searching for confirmation on Nick’s new gig, he realized that he’s been hiding for too long under his no-gender tinted umbrella and was now facing an ugly truth. Well, three ugly truths.

He doesn’t know if Nick is into guys.

He doesn’t know if Nick would ever be into him, even if Nick were into guys.

He doesn’t know Nick.

 

So the 11th comes and goes, Harry goes once again off on summer holidays and he’s back to being bored and discontent with his life.

He knows that some of his friends are avid Radio 1 listeners, always talking about the latest dance record or what joke Chris Moyles played on one of the team members in the morning. A couple of times, he hears fleeting remarks of Grimmy and the crazy things he’s been up to, what songs he plays obsessively and who he’s probably shagging.

He still doesn’t listen. He’s fine. He is absolutely fine.

***

Barbara at the bakery is getting annoying. Harry still likes her in a dutiful kind of way, but he’d much rather she didn’t come round all the time when there’s clearly no need for her. He’s so sick of never being alone and even when he’s supposed to be, like closing the bakery by himself most nights, he doesn’t get the chance. Barbara waltzes in and does something unnecessary whilst chattering away. Always talking, never letting up on what job Harry may or may not pursue in the future, how he’s doing in school and how his parents are.

“They’re the same as when you asked yesterday. Nothing has happened since then.” He knows his voice sounds strained but he’s coming to the end of his rope.

“Oh well, no harm in asking.”

Harry grits his teeth; focusing on packing up the last loafs of bread in neat plastic bags.

“And how about that nice girl you were swooning over the other week, hm? She doing alright?”

“How about you stop caring about my life so much? I know you’re lonely but for fuck’s sake mind your own business!”

He’s turned around to look at Barbara who’s stopped in the middle of sweeping the floor. Her hands are shaking a little around the broom and she looks very small, standing in the middle of the empty shop.

And he _knows_ it was wrong, he _knows_ he should apologize and make up but it just feels so good to see someone else get pulverized by words, see that he could do the same, make someone shrink to the size where you can’t even reach your own reflection in the mirror. He feels like he’s won something but is not sure what.

“I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to pry.” She’s started sweeping again, slow and steady though her shoulders are looking frailer than usual, her face carefully devoid of any emotion. Harry never realized how much warmth there was in her voice until now when there suddenly was none.

“Good.” It comes out harsher than he wanted it to but at this point, he’s burned all his bridges anyway. Why stop now?

They lock up in silence, routine setting in and erasing all need for conversation. What usually takes fifteen minutes feels like hours, silence stretching on and wearing Harry thin. Barbara leaves without so much as a goodbye, jacket tightly wrapped around her torso even though the night is warm. Harry stares after her and wonders when the feeling of victory disappeared.

Maybe it was never there in the first place.

***

“Harry.”

A knock on the door.

“Harry, open up.”

A harsher knock.

“I’m coming in.”

Harry lies on the floor, watching the ceiling. Todays questions all seem to be variations of “why are you such an idiot?” and Harry does not know the answer.

“Harry.”

His mum sounds annoyed but underneath is a streak of worry. Harry doesn’t look at her. Whatever it is, it can surely wait.

“I ran into Barbara in the shop.”

Okay, so maybe it can’t.

“And?”

Anne huffs out, kicks his foot a little. He looks over at her.

“And she was worried about you.”

He turns his head away, tries to maintain his armor of indifference. Judging by the way his mum sits down on the floor and lifts his feet up in her lap, it doesn’t work that well. She only does that when he’s sick or been crying.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing if people who’ve known you for a really long time comes up to me in the cereal aisle and asks me if you’re alright.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t care about the people in the cereal aisle.”

Her hands still from where they’ve been massaging his feet.

“Darling. You love Barbara.”

Harry shrugs. It’s not that easy when lying down, but he manages alright.

“Okay, get up.”

“What?”

“I said get up. You’re helping me with the laundry, when that’s done we’re going to have a cup of tea and if you’re still not telling me what’s wrong, I’ll thump you in the head.”

He smiles reluctantly.

“You’re not allowed to hit your children.”

“You’re not allowed to lock yourself up in this room anymore.”

She pulls Harry to his feet and puts an arm around him.

“There’s not even a lock on the door”, he mutters. She just squeezes his waist and leads him out of the room.

 

An hour later and Harry’s finally done pairing up socks. Anne comes in with two cups of tea and they sit down on the floor, sipping their drinks and reveling in the quiet.

“I said differently earlier but you don’t have to tell me.”

“Okay.”

“You do have to talk to me though.”

“Okay.”

“Using more than one word at a time.”

“Mhm.” Harry grins up at her. She rolls her eyes, puts down her cup and turns toward him.

“Can I just…. are you happy?” The worry is back in her voice and Harry can’t stand it. He can’t lie though, never could, at least not to her.

“No.”

Anne breathes out harshly, pulls him into her side and presses a kiss to his hair. Harry’s tea has gone cold, the milk leaving marks on the inside of the cup. Harry swirls it around.

“I think I should apologize to Barbara.”

Anne nods. “I think she’d really like that.”

***

Armed with a bag of toffees, a nice bottle of wine courtesy of Anne and a tentative smile, Harry arrives at Barbara’s flat. She used to live in a house three blocks down but last year after her husband passed away she moved into a nice one bedroom apartment. Harry had helped her move but had not spent any time there since.

He straightens his back and nervously pulls at his hair. It’s too short and the curls refuse to be tamed into a nice looking fringe, opting for the crazed scientist look instead.

Harry knocks on the door. He hears someone shuffling inside and footsteps coming closer to the door. Barbara opens in an apron adorned with little cupcakes, her hands drying off on a dish towel. She’s probably been baking something for the upcoming fare. Every year she stacks up on baked goods even though she could as easily gotten them from the bakery, sells them and gives the money away to charity. Of all the people Harry could have blown up on, Barbara is probably the one who deserves it the least.

“Harry! Hello, love.”

Her voice is warm again and Harry is choking on guilt.

“Uhm. Hi.” He’s fiddling with his hair again and it’s a new feeling this, being awkward around Barbara. It doesn’t last long though, because she simply pulls him into the flat and closes the door behind him. It smells like cinnamon cookies and Harry’s whole body relaxes.

“I’m really sorry. Really really sorry Barbara, I just…”

He’s lost for words so he just holds out the bag to her. Barbara takes it and peaks inside.

“Oh, you cheeky lad, did you snatch a bottle from the shop?”

“No! No, mum got it for me. Well, for you. But I paid it cause, you know. It’s from me.”

Barbara smiles at him. “Well, that was very nice of you. Thank you.”

Harry nods, looking around the room. He sneaks a look at Barbara. She looks at him like he’s a particularly endearing animal at the petting zoo.

“Do you want some tea and a toffee?”

It’s the cappuccino kind that Harry hates. He nods.

“Yes, please.”

 

“You’ve always been a very polite boy.”

“I didn’t mean it, I was just…” Harry’s stopped by Barbara’s hand on his arm.

“Let me finish, love.” Harry nods. “You’ve always been nice and calm so when you got angry at the bakery I got quite worried about you.”

“Yeah, mum said that.”

“She’s a very nice girl.”

Harry snorts. “Girl? She’s like, forty.”

“I’m old enough to call everyone boys and girls.”

Harry grins at her. “Twenty-five is not that old.”

Barbara laughs and swats at him. “Eat you toffee.”

Harry does as she says. It tastes horribly but here in Barbara’s warm kitchen, he doesn’t mind that much.

***

Will, Adam and Tom want White Eskimo to try and get gigs outside of Holmes Chapel. There’s a talent show in Manchester Tom’s heard about and he’s got the other ones excited about it. Harry’s not said much about it but he thinks the others know that he’s not fully into it. Will’s been keen on dragging Harry along to parties and get-together’s, tries to include him in all his plans but Harry’s been more reluctant lately.

Mostly it’s the Barbara incident that bothers him. He never thought he’d lash out on her but obviously this whole hiding thing has gone too far. A part of him wants to go back to who he was before he got his telly. A larger part of him wants to be exactly who he was when he was glued to the screen every morning.

He still doesn’t know if he’s ready to be A Problem. He’s still very bad at being alone.

***

At ten o’clock that night, he turns on the radio. There’s newsbeat and then a very familiar voice takes over. He says hello and introduces a song. An unfamiliar hip hop track takes over and already Harry’s feeling a bit calmer, a little more settled.

He was an idiot thinking that Nick was no longer his when the bigger radio gig came along. This is better, more intimate. He can plug his headphones into the radio and pretend that Nick’s right there with him, laughing about stupid things that happened on the dance floor last Saturday or listening to new music in silence.

He runs out making a cup of tea. Gemma’s in the kitchen, studying him as he bustles around frantically trying to get a cuppa ready before the song is over. He taps his foot whilst waiting on the kettle to boil, but it’s not the same tapping he’s been doing on stage. This one he feels thrumming through his body. He resolutely doesn’t think about why he reacts so strongly to hearing Nick’s voice again.

***

Midnight comes and goes and with it Nick’s show ends. Daniel P Carter takes over with his rock show and Harry shuts off the radio. It’s been good, two hours of Nick playing cool music and talking to the nation like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He was so lovely to the caller playing a quiz and although he didn’t have a guest in, it still felt like there was not enough time to fit everything in. It’s better than _Freshly_ because Nick gets to talk about his own life rather than just promote TV shows or new artists.

In his head, Harry already starts to make a puzzle out of the things he’s learning, stuff about flat mates and parties previously unknown to him.

It’s only been two hours but already he feels better, like an addict getting a taste of the drug he’s been craving but not enough to fully immerse him. He wants more but at the same time, he’s afraid to fall back into the rabbit hole. It seems that either he keeps his friends and along with it, this feeling of not fitting in, being more aggressive and unlike himself or he’s on his own, obsessed with a bloke from the TV and radio but feeling normal and happy.

It should be an easy choice, but it really isn’t. It’s hard to think about your own feelings when they don’t seem to please anyone else.

He finds himself sleepless, mulling it over. He knows who he should go to but once again, he’s scared to talk to her.

He’ll do it tomorrow, probably. Bright neon signs on his ceiling spells out the question. Tomorrow. He’ll sleep ‘til then.

***

After lying awake most of the night he finally resigns to it and tip-toes into Gemma’s room. He sits down on the edge of her bed. She’s a heavy sleeper, burrowed under three blankets with her face squished into the pillow.

Harry carefully rustles her a little. She doesn’t stir. He tries again.

“Gemma.”

A hand appears from under the cocoon of blankets and swats at his face.

“Gemma. Gemma. Gemmalie.”

Her eyes are like slits and she hisses slightly. She’d make a very good anaconda, Harry thinks.

“What?”

Harry puts his hands in his lap and clears his throat.

“Um, I just wondered, because before… I mean. You never…”

“Just spit it out before I kill you for waking me up.”

And well, that maybe answers his question, but he still have to ask.

“You never said if you still like me or not.” He blurts it out and then forces himself to look at Gemma to see her immediate reaction.

She drops her head back into the pillow and lets out a muffled scream. Harry doesn’t know how to react to that. He tries explaining further.

“I just don’t want to, like embarrass you or anything. I’ve gotten better but it’s still… I feel sometimes like I still want to kiss people who’re not girls and stuff and you never said if you still like me even as… as that.“

Gemma doesn’t lift her head. Harry doubts she even heard what he said, cause she was kind of groaning into the pillow the whole time. “This is not happening. It’s six thirty in the fucking morning. What’s wrong with you?”

Harry’s face crumples a bit but he hides it by ducking enough that his hair covers it.

“I’m sorry.” He starts to shuffle out of the room, willing her not to say anything more, to not make an even bigger embarrassment out of him than he himself just did.

“Hang on, what?” Harry doesn’t stop, even when he hears Gemma get out of the bed and start after him. She grabs his arm and turns him around. Harry keeps his head down and wills the tears back.

“What do you mean you’ve gotten better?”

Harry shrugs.

“Just that I’ve like… tried to not do that.”

“Do what?” Her voice sounds dangerous now, it’s far too controlled.

“Think about boys and stuff.” He wanted it to be flippant, but it came out as a whisper. Gemma’s grip on his arm tighten so much that he’s certain she’ll leave marks.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Did someone say something?”

Harry shakes his head. There’s a clock in the hallway that’s always a couple of minutes short no matter how many times you reset it, there’s the low hum of the fridge in the kitchen and there are two people breathing in the doorway to Gemma’s room but other than that the house is quiet.

“Is this why you’ve been acting like a dick for months now?”

Harry shrugs.

In a mirroring of what she did on the couch when he first told her about Nick, Gemma grips his chin and turns his head up. This time, Harry keeps his eyes open but still refuses to meet her gaze.

“What did I do when you cut off the legs on all my Barbie’s?”

“I don’t know.”

He’s pretty sure Gemma’s eyes are trying to put a laser beam through him, scan him from the inside to find the answer she’s looking for. His eyes fleet restlessly around the room, trying to find something to focus on.

He makes the mistake of looking down and sees her sleeping clothes, a pair of boxer shorts and an old t-shirt with a picture of a kitten perched in a tree branch and the words hang in there in pink font. He gave her that shirt.

“What did I do?” Her voice is softer now.

Harry bites his lip.

“You told mum that it was you who did it.”

“What did I do when those boys bullied you for your purple backpack?”

“You punched them in the face and got into trouble.”

She holds on to his wrist now, strokes her thumb over the back of his hand.

“And what did I do when you told me you wanted to kiss another boy?”

Harry swallows thickly.

“You told me there was nothing wrong with me.”

Gemma nods.

“So why does it seem like you’re ashamed of it?”

Harry furiously wipes his eyes and shrugs. He’s tense, can feel his heartbeat in his chest and the cold floor making his feet shiver a little. That damn clock is still ticking away, reminding him of the seconds wasted talking about this thing that may never go away, this thing that turns Harry into A Problem.

He’s not decided if he wants to do about it, but it feels heightened in here, like all the things he’s been putting out of his mind while hanging out with the boys or avoiding the telly now comes back, ten times stronger.

He can feel the boy inside him screaming for release and he can feel the voice of fear trying to choke him, overtake him before he grows too strong. He doesn’t know what to do and it must show in his face because Gemma squeezes his wrist, making him focus on nothing but the pressure of her hand.

“Okay.” She leads him back to the bed, sits down and drags him down with her. “You’re going to have to tell me sometime, but if you don’t want to now, that’s fine.”

Harry nods. He counts fifteen seconds on the clock and waits.

“How about now?”

There it is. For all the understanding and peptalk Gemma can give, patience was never her thing. Harry feels oddly comforted by it.

“It’s just. Something that, ehm Will said.” Gemma’s hand is back on his arm. He hisses a little, a bruise has already started to form there and it fits her fingers perfectly.

“Harry.”

“So I just thought that I’d make it less… obvious.”

“I’ll kick his face in.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Yes, I will. He’s always been a little shit.”

“ _Gemma_.”

“He has! What about when he sent mum that creepy Valentine? Or when he broke your Spider Man car because he insisted on driving it down that stupid hill? Or when he told you that masturbating meant sunbathing so you went back to school telling everyone that that’s what you’d been doing all summer?”

“The last one’s pretty funny.” Harry can’t help smiling now. She’s always been good at drawing him out when he’s hidden inside the labyrinth of his mind. Sometimes that’s the reason he goes there in the first place, to see if she’ll notice and bring him back out. It’s the strongest reassurance of love he knows.

“I’ll trip him the next time I see him on his stupid bike. He’s a twat.”

And then he hides again, goes under, back to being A Problem. The reason for someone else potentially getting hurt, the reason his sister is awake right now and not enjoying her Wednesday lie-in.

“No. Nuh-uh. You’re not doing that.” He realizes he must have been talking out loud when she pushes him quite violently down on the bed and sits on his stomach.

“Is that what he said? That you’re a problem? I’ll give him a fucking problem.”

“But it’s -“

“Who do you trust more, him or me?”

Harry tries to push her off but she simply catches his wrists and holds them down.

“Him or me?”

He bites his lip. “You.”

She releases his hands and collapses down on the bed next to him. Gemma’s ceiling doesn’t give him any questions, only constellations of stars formed with the stickers out of the biscuit packets from fourth grade. She always liked the ones with stars and Harry liked the ones with animal. His wardrobe door is filled with wonky looking animal stickers and her ceiling is covered in stars.

“Who cares what he thinks?”

He turns to look at her.

“You?”

She snorts. He feels calmer now. The alarm clock on Gemma’s bedside table shows 07.00. Harry clears his throat.

“Do you want to watch Nick on the telly with me?”

“Will you make me a cuppa?”

Harry nods. Gemma lets out a huge yawn and drags the blankets away from underneath him. She wraps all three of them around herself like a cape, gets out of bed and without another word trots off towards Harry’s room.

After closing his eyes and breathing deeply a couple of times to relax, a tip he found in the yoga magazine he once bought at a trawling-the-tabloids-for-Nick-pics-Tesco-trip, Harry goes into the kitchen and starts on the tea.

 

Harry spends the first hour of the show explaining things to Gemma, like “Oh, this is the part of the show when Nick and Alexa sits down and talk about things” or “Usually you can see a bit of Nick’s ankle when he stands up like that but right now he’s wearing his dark jeans and they go all the way over his Converse.”

Gemma hums and nods along, drinks her tea and pays an impressive amount of attention for someone who’s usually incoherent before noon. Seeing the show again makes Harry remember why he was so obsessed with it in the first place. It’s silly and doesn’t really take anything seriously. Maybe he can do that. Not yet perhaps, but sometime soon.

He also realizes that he does indeed prefer the radio when Nick can not only be the sole voice of the show but also talk more about himself and give insights to his life. While Alexa is nice and obviously a good friend (and more?) to Nick, radio gives unrestricted access to Nick and Harry would rather have his undivided attention as a listener than share it as a viewer.

During one of the ad breaks Harry disappears into the kitchen to scramble some eggs for them to eat in bed. When he gets back Gemma has fallen asleep, snoring slightly to an advert about diapers.

Harry places the plates on the nightstand and carefully sits down on the bed. He puts a pillow under her head and strokes her hair for a bit, but he knows she’s never liked that as much as him, so he grabs his plate and lowers the sound on the telly. Nick and Alexa come back on. Harry studies Nick and for the first time in weeks he’s feeling like this could be okay.


End file.
